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Boycotting is a perfectly legitimate tool, and boycotts can work. A recent threatened boycott of Indiana (led by CEO of salesforce.com Mark Benioff) led to a reversal of its anti LGBT laws. A boycott of Israel is certainly quite reasonable, given its (by now) well documented bad behavior towards Palestinians.

I find it curious that those who lament Israel's "delegitimization" do not point to Israel's behavior as a cause. Israel is now widely seen as victimizer not victim, and justifiably so. Bernard Levy would do well to come up with new arguments rather than regurgitating stale stories that have failed.

I feel that many of the commentators here would benefit from some basic education on the subject of Israel - simply because otherwise your criticism lends much credibility to BHL's article ;)

ALL Israeli citizens have equal rights - whether they are Jews, Arabs, Christians, Cherkess, Bahai, Bedouins, etc. Israel is a secular democracy and all these groups are represented in the Israeli Parliament. Some Israeli opposition lawmakers even joined recent flotilla to Gaza.

You cannot accuse Israel of racist laws against the Palestinians any more than you can accuse EU in discrimination against Africans or US in discrimination against Mexicans. The only loophole is if you believe in a "one-state solution", but in this case you are clearly at odds with most of the world, including the US, the EU countries, the UN, the Arab League, Israel and the Palestinian Authority - all of whom have subscribed to the principle of "two states for two peoples".

On the other hand, the treatment of Palestinian "refugees" (i.e. the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees) in Lebanon and Syria does resemble apartheid. Ignoring this while bashing Israel only proves the BHL's thesis.

Finally, Zionism is a Jewish independence movement and deserves just as much respect as, for example, American fight against independence celebrated on the 4th of July.

What a poor argument. In a way the BDS movement is paying Israel compliment that it will listen to reasonable voices who encourage it to respect its obligations under international humanitrian law and end the occupation and theft of its neighbours' land. The brutal nature of its occupation is evident from the astonishing numbers of children killed during the Israeli army's last brutal assault on the Gaza Strip. Because of Israel's avowed commitment to human rights and democracy, it is held to a higher standards of accountability than the despots in other lands. Assad and the others will wither on the vine eventually but Israel shows no sign of responding to reason. Every turn of the screw to make the Palestinian youth more desperate, more poor, more bitter and more humiliated only adds to the potential for violence across the region. Would there be any Hamas today if it were not for the brutality of the Israeli occupation and if Israel had taken reasonable measures to respect the integrity of the Occupied Territories instead of taking them over and building on them. Israel deserves to prosper and thrive but not at any price.

If you politicize your religion then you open yourself and your ideological fellow travelers to criticism, legitimate and illegitimate, that is political fact. But the question is does anyone have the right to criticize your ideology?
BHL is a Zionist apologist and therefore tows the Party Line that Zionism is above critique: in sum any criticism of Israel/Zionism is Antisemitism prima facie!
Call this what it is an act of moral/political desperation, framed in the pseudo-philosophical chatter that is BHL's trademark. The playing of the historical part of the Eternal Victim is shopworn, from overuse in the face of the reality of Operation Protective Edge and it's many precursors!

Just answer this question: how many jews live in arab countries? How many jews would arab countries allow to live in them in peace and be safe there? What protection of universal human rights are practiced in Arab countries? Comparisons are useful because they explain why the Israelis are terrified of relinquishing any territory to the Arabs. How many wars are going on in Arab countries? The Israelis would be absolutely stupid to relinquish territory to arabs that are intent on murdering them as many attempt at every instance everywhere in the world. Jews have been ethnically cleansed from all of the arab countries. There is no discussion. Islam considers jews as dimmi and inferior and jihad is part of the religion as we have seen time immemorial. Arab culture and arabs are phenemonal, but is there an arab country that anyone on this board would feel comfortable raising a family in if they were a jew? You got to be kidding. Now, Bibi's actions vis a vis the Palestinians are completely misguided and all to retain power and empower his developer buddies. The only way forward are joint projects of the Israel to build the territories as part of Israel and create economic democracy and slowly to integrate the remaining Palestinians into a greater all-inclusive nation. Israel cannot be a jewish state, it must become something much greater and show the world that only there can a miracle happen between alleged enemies. The Palestinians and the Israelis must learn to grow back together into a new nation. Steps must be taken and the world must foster this way forward. The Palestinaina authority and Hamas are completely corrupt either in administration or in ideology, they must be replaced by a new movement that brings everyone together. The founders of Israel would be disgusted at what has happened to the State of Israel.

How many Jews live in Arab countries is a good question but completely beside the point. The point is that the Israelis have grievously wronged the Palestinians -- and those crimes aren't mitigated in any way by crimes committed by other Arabs -- unless you hold the racist idea that all Arabs are fungible.

You are welcome to your fantasy of a state where Jews and Palestinians will live in harmony. But the reality is that Israel's leaders envisage the one-state solution as being a Jewish state solution with those Palestinians who are not expelled constituting a population of helots.

I don't have any ties to BDS. But I am dismayed at the feeble debating points Bernard-Henri Levy uses to try to discredit Israel's critics and excuse Israel's ongoing crimes.

Levy's essay is mostly an extended insult to Israel. Why would Israel wish to be classed in the same league as Bashar al-Assad rather than, say, Renzi's Italy or Hollande's France?

Levy dishes up the usual line about how Israel is the region's only democracy. But is Israel a true friend of democracy in the region? How does Levy justify the disgusting love-fest between Netanyahu and Egypt's General Sisi? It seems clear that Israel is the only democracy in the region, and it is going to do whatever it takes to make sure that things stay that way.

Levy tries to change the subject -- to Qatar! But we are not talking about Qatar; we are talking about Israel, a country that professedly embodies our values. Israel is (reasonably) seen by its neighbors as a European plantation in the Middle East. Qatar is not.

Is Levy seriously asking that we should avert our gaze from Israel's crimes so long as there are greater crimes happening in other countries? So long as Boko Haram is on the loose, Israel is above criticism?

Shockingly, Levy invokes the Nazi term "judenfrei." But the true heirs of that policy are the Israelis who ethnically cleansed much of Palestine after the 1948 war. It is Israel that is founded on the idea of ethno-religious identity. And some influential Israelis have called for the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank.

I don't oppose bringing pressure on the Palestinians. But why is Levy calling for a false symmetry? After all, Israel is the aggressor, so long as it does not dismantle its settlements in the West Bank. It is a properly a pariah nation.

Most tawdry of all is Levy's exploitation of the charge of anti-Semitism to try to smear his opponents. He can't win the argument, so he resorts to name-calling.

Here is a practical suggestion for Levy. He should join with others in calling for Israel to immediately evacuate the West Bank. Nothing is certain, but I expect the Palestinians will have their hands too full trying to build a state to find the time and resources to dry to drive Israelis into the sea. And it would be the right thing to so.

Why does he condemn BDS for not criticizing Bashar, IS or Qatar while he himself is defending a country that engaged in massacres in 2008, 2012 and 2014? In fact his is no real argument at all against BDS, but just a distraction.

Seventeen Arabs in the Knesset is no proof that Israel is not an Apartheid state. According to human rights organization Adalah Israel has over 50 laws that discriminate against Israeli Arabs directly or indirectly (http://www.adalah.org/en/law/index). The situation in the West Bank is very similar to Apartheid.

B-H Lévy's comparison of BDS to the Nazi’s by using words like Judenfrei and Yellow Star and his suggestion that boycotting Israel is a Nazi idea and that it is an idea that we should resist “to avoid repeating [histories] ugliest scenes”, i.e. the Holocaust, tells me very little about BDS but a lot about how low B-H Lévy has sunk!

Well, Israel prime minister confirmed that he doesn't believe in the 2 states solution and he didn't show any serious intentions to engage with the Palestinians, so the boycott is indeed one way to put pressure which could bring positive results. The fact that the organizers of the boycott are not the best example of democracy is probably not at all relevant in this discussion just like the fact that Israel is a perfect democracy (but has no intention to really negotiate and give up on any front, starting with the illegal occupation of lots of land).

You'd have thought Levy was capable of producing a more sophisticated argument than anti expansionist Zionism equals anti Semitism. Apparently not. The old tunes are best. Any opposition to Israel is automatically anti Semitism and the more crudely expressed, with yellow stars and other grotesqueries to add color, the better.

Dear Bernard, if your best argument is to show everyone else's crimes, then you don't really have an argument do you? If one day you see the way people (yes, trust me, they are still people) in Qalandia checkpoint are treated daily maybe then you would be reminded of the a people was forced to use a yellow star on their arms. And, just to add, I am against the BDS movement because I don't believe that is helping anyone. In any case, they are not responsible for any death, like someone said here before. So if you like to compare crimes (like you seem to be doing) maybe you would give better use of your stage by screaming to the winds about the crimes that fundamentalists, both in Israel and in Palestine keep committing on a daily basis.

How can anyone forget Bernard-Henri Lévy? He was the notorious backer of the Libya intervention, who in 2011 threw his weight behind France's intensive air strikes, which destroyed Muammar Gaddafi's military capabilities and led to his defeat and fall.
Now BHL condemns the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a thriving Palestinian-led initiative that attacks institutional links to Israel’s illegal settlements. It calls for an end to Israel's occupation of Arab lands conquered in 1967 and the dismantling of its West Bank wall, recognising the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and respecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
BHL says the "BDS is supposedly a worldwide civil-society movement embodying respect for law, democracy, and human rights". He finds it unfair to "target the only country in the region that was founded on those values"? Israel, he claims has honoured these "values", "despite a nearly 70-year state of war with its neighbors".
He also questions the analogy between the democratic Israel and the apartheid South Africa. Instead he highlights the modern-day slavery in Qatar, "whose foundations" and "Saudi think tanks" are the main sponsors for the BDS movement; the slaughtering of civilians by Syria's Bashar Al-Assad; the atrocities committed by ISIS etc. Moreover he doubts whether the Palestinians really want a two-state solution, accusing "promoters of the BDS movement" of seeking "a 'one-state solution' (Abunimah’s term) – under a Palestinian flag".
Although the BDS aims to “protect the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194," he sees this as a means to establish "on those lands a new Arab country", allowing them "to undergo an ethnic cleansing that would make it judenfrei".
But BHL ignores the fact that within Israel, discrimination against non-Jews is flagrant; the land laws are just the most extreme example, though not South African-style apartheid. In the occupied territories, the situation is far worse than it was in South Africa, where the white nationalists needed the black population to work for them. As disturbing as the bantustans were, the nationalist government devoted resources to sustaining and seeking international recognition for them. This is not the case in Israel.
BHL sees the BDS movement as a "sinister caricature of the anti-totalitarian and anti-apartheid struggles", aiming "to discriminate against, delegitimize, and vilify an Israel that in their mind never stopped wearing its yellow star". He suggests activists to focus on more "noble causes", like fighting ISIS, Boko Haram...and "striving for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians". Does he have an idea how?

If the author's intention was to provide an apologia for Israel's continued occupation, mistreatment and massacres of Palestinians, he has done a very poor job. Just by showing that there are other terrorist states and Governments committing war crimes and genocide as well does not absolve Israel of its guilt. The author also tries to pull wool over readers' eyes where he talks of the two-state solution when everyone knows that while Israel publicly postures the two-state solution, it continues to invade and encroach whatever little land is left for Palestinians in order to establish facts-on-the-ground, leaving nothing more than four prison-walls for Palestinians to negotiate for. Seventy years since the holocaust, some people do need reminding that you can not go on blackmailing till perpetuity the entire humanity for a crime committed by one generation.

It's stark the majority on both sides prefer a "One-state solution". I'm not entirely sure if you're joking about the two-state solution being the "only real formula for peace", both of the silly children want the last cookie and aren't willing to share. The stronger one will snatch the cookie, however mummy and daddy won't be happy, so the solution is for the stronger one to slowly and gradually break down the weaker one's strength, resolve, and it's sense of identity. For lasting peace, there can only be one winner in this conflict! the parents would just be glad to see it end.

As sceptical as I am about the peacefulness and stability within a potentially independent Palestinian state or the viability of the 'two-state solution' (which is anything but a solution), giving the Palestinians their own state has nothing to do with Bashar Al-Assad, IS, or the deportation of Christians. I found this quite frankly a cheap distraction tactic that belongs more in a London tabloid than in an article coming from you. There are other humanist bodies that have a more global net, whilst BDS is supposed to concentrate on Israel/Palestine relations.

As Mr Lee Kuan Yew once said to an Israel general, Israel have shown Singapore how to use strength and how NOT to use strength. I believe LKY was talking about learning from both positive and negative examples.

BHL would do well to remember that a plurality of ethnicities or countries of origin does not preclude a country from being an apartheid state. On the contrary, it is a necessary condition to create apartheid- there is no apartheid possible in Korea and Japan, for example, for this reason.

the part about qatar being an apartheid is really dumb. although it is close to modern day slavery, those slaves know what they are getting (into) before APPLYING for a JOB and getting their visas, and flying 8 hours to get there. and the land is obviously not stolen from them. and the part about how israel is multiethnic is really twisted. firstly, almost all ethniticites talked about here are for sure jew. being a turk and having spent alot of time in the ME and europe, I know how jews live - in distilled colonies in their respective countries. marry each other, avoiding "foreigners" at all cost. there is no culture nor an ideology of an open society. and their backward religion obviously makes it much worse. how can you be multiethnic when the torah says jews are superior humans and the rest are lesser? and what about black jews being harassed? multiethnic my butt..

I think there is intellectual dishonesty here by BHL. He's completely oblivious of betrayal of Zionism by current Israeli State...and what has become of it today! The yellow star is not the issue. The issue is the apartheid policy of (King) Bibi and his Likud Party. There would be no need for BDS if there was reason for it. American campuses are also part of BDS...

May be he should have been reading Shlomo-Ben-Ami and his expose's here in PS.

Bravo for speaking the truth, Mr. Levy!
Deligitimization of Israel is based on willfully ignoring many other much worse human rights abuses. Numbers of dead and refugees in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and Lampedusa speak for themselves.

What an obnoxious title for this article. BHL should be ashamed of himself.

I'll leave this subject alone except to say, that for the present-day state of Israel to play the part of the victim is a bad joke. Every Israeli is raised from childhood with all the historical background they need to be able to evaluate the situation from the Palestinian side. I'll leave it at that.

BHL is in France well known for strongly backing the Netanyahou-Lieberman-Bennett Israel.
He is jewish, but it would be a mistake to think that he is donig so *because* is jewish. This is only his personal responsibility, to be Jewish has nothing to do with that.
Because, in fact, there a lot of Jewish people who on the contrary think, write, and act against this Israel.
Not only in Israel (where this phenomenon is well known), but even elsewhere.
So let me put here some link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ilan_Papp%C3%A9
http://www.ujfp.org/spip.php?article66
http://www.ujfp.org/spip.php?rubrique58
http://www.ujfp.org/spip.php?article3762
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZBZX4ZxPjA
I don't put here no links about Chassidims' historical opposition to the existence of Israel because it would require too space.

Mr Henry-Levy,
BDS exists because it is inadmissible that a developed country act in the way Israel has been acting against the Palestinian. What is the point of extend BDS to include barbaric lunatics? Boycott Boko Haram? Islamic States? This is a silly argument.
The simple fact is that Israel is illegally occupying land and building settlements. Transferring its own population to the occupied land against International Law.
Yes, you could argue Israel only responds to what Hamas, etc. do. But, can you explain what is the difference between Hamas and Haganah or the Stern Gang? How did Israel behave against the British control of Palestine between 1920 and 1948? What about the criminal bombing of King David Hotel?

Does anyone really believe that Israel is despised because its people are Jewish? And that Israel's acts in destroying the lives of million of Palestinians over a period of almost 70 years are of no consequence in shaping world opinion? States are sometimes despised simply because they're despicable.

@Paul Davey - Yes. I do believe that the millions of Muslims who have been raised to think of all Jews as "pig-dogs" hate Israel because its people are Jewish. When you consider the text books they learn from which document how every evil in the world is from the Jews, why wouldn't they? Even though millions of Muslims is still a small percentage of the world Muslim population, they exist and I can acknowledge their existence. Why can't you?

Mr Bernard certainly has the galls and balls to write it so loud and clear. I'm tired of always reading the Israelites as evil and the Palistinians with HAMAS as saints. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. If Hamas fire rockets and Israel respond in equal measure, why single Israel as evil? Well said Bernard long live Israel.

It's time to retire this rhetorical move. Every bully, criminal and tyrant is quick to point at some other guy and plead: "Hey, why am I getting grief when this other guy is so much worse?" But of course, this is a distraction strategy. He is still a bully/criminal/tyrant, even if that other guy really is worse.

See also:

In the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump has consistently sold out the blue-collar, socially conservative whites who brought him to power, while pursuing policies to enrich his fellow plutocrats.

Sooner or later, Trump's core supporters will wake up to this fact, so it is worth asking how far he might go to keep them on his side.

A Saudi prince has been revealed to be the buyer of Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi," for which he spent $450.3 million. Had he given the money to the poor, as the subject of the painting instructed another rich man, he could have restored eyesight to nine million people, or enabled 13 million families to grow 50% more food.

While many people believe that technological progress and job destruction are accelerating dramatically, there is no evidence of either trend. In reality, total factor productivity, the best summary measure of the pace of technical change, has been stagnating since 2005 in the US and across the advanced-country world.

The Bollywood film Padmavati has inspired heated debate, hysterical threats of violence, and a ban in four states governed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party – all before its release. The tolerance that once accompanied India’s remarkable diversity is wearing thin these days.

The Hungarian government has released the results of its "national consultation" on what it calls the "Soros Plan" to flood the country with Muslim migrants and refugees. But no such plan exists, only a taxpayer-funded propaganda campaign to help a corrupt administration deflect attention from its failure to fulfill Hungarians’ aspirations.

French President Emmanuel Macron wants European leaders to appoint a eurozone finance minister as a way to ensure the single currency's long-term viability. But would it work, and, more fundamentally, is it necessary?

The US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel comes in defiance of overwhelming global opposition. The message is clear: the Trump administration is determined to dictate the Israeli version of peace with the Palestinians, rather than to mediate an equitable agreement between the two sides.